Behind our eyes beta version

a sample scene...

"Hi Touya."

"It's Dabi to you."

"Well forgive me for forgetting you are a 24 year old toddler in the middle of a tantrum. I'm surprised you didn't choose a more colorful and expressive name like, "Harbinger of Revenge,' or 'Paragon of Devastation' or something. Dabi is an awfully subtle name choice for a child stuck in the body of an overcooked man. Or is it short for something? Destruction, Annihilation, Be- Bereavement and I? Hmm, Bakugo, what word starts with I?"

"Idiot."

"Yes! Idiot! Thank you!"

"Bold of you, Great Explosion Murder God Dynamight."

"I'd be careful how I speak to him if I were you. He's only present because he's one of the only people I know might be able to stop me from killing you. Before you ask, no, Shoto is not on this list."

"Shoto doesn't want me dead."

"I didn't say he wouldn't try to stop me. He would. He just can't. Explosion Murder God here is the only willing and available person that might be able to. There are so, so many people that believe that your 13 year temper tantrum needs to come to an end."

"Y'know I'm gettin' sick o' you calling what I'm doin' a temper tantrum, Reina. You don't know what I've been through. You haven't seen where I've been.

"Yes I have. Yes I have. All those trainings, all those beatings? Who was right there taking it all with you? At least you had brothers and siblings no matter how little you saw them. All I had were you and Shoto, all the way on the other side of the world, once a month.

"So what's the difference between us, then? Why are we on opposite sides of the glass?"

"Because I stayed. You left and I stayed. All the responsibility you couldn't deal with? Shoto?"

"Don't fuckin bring-"

"The pressure you couldn't take? I did. I shouldn't have had to, but I did."

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When I get back, T is sitting in front of the now reinforced glass balcony, wearing my big black hoodie with his hands inside the bust of the shirt, not the sleeves.

Usually when I return, he's in bed reading one of my books (he's not allowed to watch the news,) and he at least acknowledges me with a short glance or on good days, a hum. He's never shown any interest in the balcony before.

"What are you doing?" I ask.

He doesn't respond.

Aizawa gave me permission to read his mind at any point in time but the brain of a highly traumatized villain isn't one I'd like to go in and out of willy nilly. And there's something about how small he looks and the fact that he's wearing my clothes that makes reading his mind the worst possible thing I could do for him. My goal is to neutralize and get him to some semblance of normal so we can give him what he was denied so many years earlier, not make him feel like even more of a prisoner.

And in the name of normal, instead of prying it out of him, I just prepare two bowls of the chocolate and caramel ice-cream I know he likes, try not to be too amused by the fact that I'm once again babysitting a 21 year old, and settle down beside him.

He sees the ice-cream, I know he does because the ceramic bowl makes an infuriating scraping sound against the floor each time I inch it closer to him, but he doesn't make any move towards it. He just turns his face further away from me with each motion.

"You can't sit on the floor forever ok?" I say after 20 minutes. "I certainly wouldn't. Koda lets his rats run free on this floor."

"Sorry," he says.

"Don't apologize to me. What's going on?"

His entire body freezes for a moment and he turns his head away from me even more before he says, "Nothing. Just thinking."

"Tomura, let me look at you."

He pauses and then shakes his head.

"Why not?"

He doesn't say anything.

"Are you hiding something?" I say.

He shakes his head again but this time I know he's lying.

"You don't have to be afraid of me. And you don't have to lie to me. I'm rooting for you. In fact, I might be the only one that's really rooting for you. I want to help you but I can't help you if you're not going to be honest with me."

"Sorry,"

"I'm going to pull the hood off now. Is that okay?"

He nods slowly and I warn him not to freak out on me before I pull of his hood so I can see his face.

His entire right cheek is covered in angry red and swollen lines and when I pull his hair and the rest of the hoodie behind his ear, I see it runs all the way down to his neck. Maybe lower.

He doesn't let me look for long though. He's scooting away and tugging the hood back over his face.

This isn't the first time he's done this to himself. When we first captured him, both before and after I visited his mind, he used to scratch himself silly. And by silly, I mean deep enough to break skin and draw his own blood. The prison would need four guards to hold all of his limbs away from his body and an extra one to tranquilize him. The only thing stopping them from putting him in a straitjacket were my orders not to.

After I was well enough to go see him, Aizawa briefed me on the situation and I gave him full gloves. My own pair. After that incident, he didn't really scratch himself besides the occasional lingering itch. Not until today.

"When did this happen?"

He wraps his hands around the ropes, tugs on them till the entire hood shrinks around his face and then pulls at the neck so it goes slack again. He repeats this motion in an endless loop of tugging and pulling and tugging and pulling and when I try to hold his hands to stop him, he flinches away, his breathing quickly turning fast and heavy.

His eyes are wild and scared. He looks at me like he's hurt. Like I've hurt him.

"What am I doing wrong?" I say, picking up the spoon in his melted ice cream and twirling it till all the dark and light browns mix into one sad shade of brown. I feel a deep wave of guilt for turning his ice-cream into this messy glop and look to apologize when I realize that the turning in my stomach isn't my guilt I'm feeling, it's his.

"Tomura," I say, attempting to meet him halfway, "I've explained to you that these crimes aren't your own. You committed them, yes and you will be judged for them but that's only because someone has to and my influence doesn't run that deep. All for One put something in you-"

"He didn't put anything in me. It was already there. I regret what happened to Mon and Hana but I knew what I was doing when I killed my father. Even now I can't renounce the relief that I felt when I saw my mother and grandparents crumble to ashes. I'm evil. There is something inside me that's just so angry and I don't know how it got there or what it is or how to make it stop."

"There's nothing inside you. At least, not anymore. You were just a child that was hurt and when the people that were supposed to love you didn't, someone else did. Unfortunately that someone else was an evil, evil man that took all your innocence and youth and replaced it with violence. You've never been a bad person. You just did a lot of stupid shit because no one taught you better."

He doesn't speak save for a small "Thank you for the ice-cream" he mumbles when he picks up our bowls, sets them back in the freezer and goes to lay in my bed. I'm just going to leave him and spend the rest of the day with Hitoshi, trying to get something useful for my current case when I get an idea.

"Hey think about it like this. You didn't do all that bad stuff and neither did the boy you were before you became Tomura. So just think of who you are now, or at least, who you want to be. And when you become that person, whether it be Tenko Shimura or someone else, and you've let go of Tomura, then you can let go of all the pain and guilt that comes with him.

He doesn't reply. He's so still that it's just the gentle rise and fall of his back that lets me know he's still alive. But he heard me, and that's enough for today.